How Latin America is Perceived in UN General Debates

Wendy Chavez Tacuri

2024-05-06

How is Latin America Perceived in Global Diplomacy?

In this presentation, I will explore how Latin America is represented in speeches delivered at the UN General Debate.

My main goals were to understand:

  • How often Latin America is mentioned
  • In what context it’s discussed
  • Who is shaping the narrative

Why This Matters

Understanding how Latin America is talked about at the UN matters for how the region is seen, treated, and engaged with globally.

These speeches shape diplomatic relationships, guide foreign policy, and reflect who gets to define international narratives.

This project matters because representation influences reality.

What I Analyzed

To explore how Latin America is framed in global diplomacy, I worked with a dataset of UN General Debate speeches from 1970 to 2015.

Using a mix of Python and R, I focused on:

  • Tracking how often each Latin American country was mentioned
  • Visualizing regional attention over time
  • Analyzing the tone and content of speeches
  • Understanding what countries talk most about Latin America

Mentions of Latin America in UN Speeches

After cleaning the data and filtering only speeches that mentioned Latin America, I looked at how often each country was referenced.

Some countries, like Cuba and Mexico, are mentioned very frequently and others far less. This gives us a first hint at which nations attract the most international attention.

The following table shows each Latin American country sorted by the number of mentions.

country mentions
Cuba 2023
Panama 1867
Mexico 1635
Nicaragua 1518
Chile 1479
Guatemala 1386
Brazil 1304
Uruguay 1213
Argentina 1206
El Salvador 1103
Bolivia 1095
Ecuador 1089
Venezuela 1034
Honduras 1005
Colombia 995
Peru 963
Paraguay 832
Costa Rica 786
Dominican Rep. 524

This bar chart helps visualize the rankings of countries by how often they’re mentioned.

What Do These Speeches Talk About?

To better understand how Latin America is discussed at the UN, I started by looking at the most frequently used words in speeches that mention the region.

This gives us a first sense of what kind of language surrounds Latin America in global diplomatic conversations.

A Visual Glimpse of Language

After identifying the most frequent words, I created a wordcloud to visually highlight which terms dominate the discourse about Latin America.

This kind of visualization shows how often words like “nations”, “peace”, and “development” appear.

The size of each word reflects how often it was used in the speeches, giving us a quick sense of tone and focus.

What These Words Suggest

Looking at both the bar chart and the wordcloud, we start to get a clearer picture of how Latin America is represented in UN speeches.

Many of the most frequent words like “peace”, “development”, and “international”
point to a diplomatic and cooperative framing.
They suggest that Latin America is often discussed as a partner in global goals.

At the same time, other recurring terms such as “security”, “conflict”, and “challenges”
hint at concerns or crises.

This contrast raised a key question:
What kind of tone do these speeches really have?

That’s what led me to the next part of my project: sentiment analysis.

How Are These Speeches Framed Emotionally?

Are speeches about Latin America framed in a positive, negative, or neutral tone?

To explore this, I decided to use TextBlob, a Python library that assigns a basic polarity score to each text. This method doesn’t capture the full complexity of political language, but it still provides a useful overview of how the tone of speeches mentioning Latin America has evolved over time.

Later in the project, I did use GPT API to interpret the topics generated by LDA, since I felt that was a moment where a more interpretive model was really needed. But for this first sentiment trend, a lighter approach felt like a better fit.

How Has the Tone Changed Over Time?

To see whether speeches about Latin America became more positive, neutral, or negative over time, I used a simple sentiment analysis method called TextBlob.

Each speech receives a score:

  • +1 = very positive
  • 0 = neutral
  • –1 = very negative

This line chart shows the average tone per year. Each dot reflects how UN speeches portrayed Latin America that year.

Most years hover around 0.11, meaning speeches were generally slightly positive in tone, but we can still see spikes and drops that may reflect key geopolitical moments.

Why Sentiment Isn’t enough

Looking at the tone of the speeches helped me get a general sense of how Latin America is talked about. But I realized that wasn’t enough.

Just knowing if something sounds positive or negative doesn’t explain what the speeches are actually about.

Two speeches could both have a positive tone, but one might talk about peace and the other about economic growth.

So I wanted to go deeper and figure out the main topics being discussed. For that, I used something called topic modeling, which helps group speeches by the themes they focus on.

It’s a way to understand not just how Latin America is talked about, but what it’s talked about in connection with.

What Are the Main Topics?

This helped me group the speeches based on common themes.

Each row in the chart shows a different topic, and the words inside each row are the ones most often used in that group of speeches.

For example, some topics focus on global cooperation, others on democracy or security.

Interpreting the Topics

Once I saw which words came up in each topic, I wanted to know more about what those topics actually meant.

Instead of just guessing, I asked GPT API to look at the top words in each topic and describe what they seemed to be about.

Some topics were about democracy and peace. Others included terms from the Cold War period, or focused on human rights and economic struggles.

This step helped turn abstract data into real-world insights about how the region is seen.

What follows is a closer look at each of the four topics identified.

Cooperation and Conflict in a Global Setting

Below is a short summary of what the first topic seems to be about, based on GPT’s interpretation:

Topic 1 – Summary

This topic likely relates to regional cooperation and challenges.
Words like union and democracy suggest collaboration and governance,
while terms like terrorism, aggression, and climate point to global security and environmental concerns.

The tone is mixed, highlighting both opportunities for cooperation and signs of tension or crisis.

The full interpretation is included in the final report

Geopolitics and Power Struggles

The second topic identified by the LDA model brings up themes related to power, international influence, and Cold War politics.

Topic 2 – Summary

This topic centers on geopolitical tensions and power dynamics.
Terms like terrorism, Soviet, Europe, and powers suggest discussions about security threats, foreign influence, and Cold War legacies.

The tone is serious and complex, with signs of competition and tension between global powers.

The full interpretation is included in the final report

Latin America in a Global Context

The third topic identified in the LDA analysis shifts the lens outward, showing how Latin America is discussed in relation to global events and power structures.

Topic 3 – Summary

This topic frames Latin America within a broader international landscape.
Terms like Israel, Arab, treaty, and Soviet point to global conflicts, diplomatic relations, and external influence.

The tone focuses on international entanglements, showing how Latin America is often seen through the lens of global politics rather than just regional dynamics.

The full interpretation is included in the final report

Governance, Rights, and Global Ties

The final topic centers on how Latin America is framed in relation to governance, human rights, and global influence.

Topic 4 – Summary

This topic reflects speeches that deal with political systems, human rights issues, and international relationships.

Key words like democracy, regime, apartheid, and terrorism suggest a focus on governance and security challenges.

Mentions of Namibia, Europe, and debt point to the global context in which these issues are discussed, emphasizing Latin America’s ties with the international community.

The full interpretation is included in the final report

Having examined the key narratives and sentiments surrounding Latin America in UN speeches, the next logical step is to ask:

Which countries are shaping these narratives?

In the following section, I will explore who talks about Latin America most frequently in the General Debate, and how the level of attention has changed over time.

Which Countries are framing Latin America?

After filtering only the speeches that reference Latin America, I examined which countries tend to mention the region most frequently.

Not surprisingly, the countries that talk most about Latin America in UN debates are: Uruguay, El Salvador, Peru, and Mexico. This reflects a strong regional focus on shared issues and mutual interests.

However, a few non-Latin American countries also appear, such as Laos, Vietnam, Angola, Portugal, and the USA. Their presence suggests geopolitical, historical, or economic connections that drive their engagement with Latin American topics.

This chart reveals who is actively shaping global discourse around Latin America, and helps us understand how attention to the region varies depending on international interests.

Here, we can now observe how Latin America fades in and out of global debates.

This line chart shows how frequently Latin America was mentioned in speeches at the United Nations General Debate, year by year from the early 1970s through 2015. The data suggest that Latin America was a prominent topic during the Cold War era (e.g., due to U.S.–Soviet interest in the region, revolutions, debt crisis). Mentions dropped in later decades, possibly due to changing geopolitical priorities.

What Did I Learn?

Understanding how Latin America is portrayed in UN speeches over time reveals important trends in international politics:

  • During the Cold War (1970s–1980s): Latin America was often framed through ideological tensions, especially between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, with countries like Cuba frequently mentioned.
  • In the 1990s: Mentions slightly dropped as attention shifted to post-Cold War transitions, but themes of democracy and human rights remained central.
  • Post-2000: The tone became more varied with increasing mentions of cooperation, but also of security challenges, development, and crisis.

Across decades, Latin America appears in UN debates both as a regional actor and as a site of global concerns. What surprised me most was how the same region is described so differently depending on who is speaking, when, and why.

Why This Research Matters

Latin America isn’t always at the center of global conversations, but that doesn’t mean it’s ignored.
By looking at how the region is mentioned in UN speeches, this project helps us see what kind of attention Latin America gets in international politics.

This research matters because the way a region is talked about can affect how it is treated.
Speeches like these help shape how countries are seen by others.
They can influence relationships, cooperation, and even global priorities.

Key Takeaway

How countries are described in official speeches can shape how they’re understood and treated on the world stage.

Thank you!

Presented by Wendy Chavez Tacuri